Award winning author, drinker of spirits, faceless poker player, impromptu musician, jack-of-all-trades, cancer killing agent, father of triplets. Visiting http://www.thomaslopinski.com/ for more.
Over the last few years, I commissioned a couple of brilliant musicians to revise, rearrange and reimagine songs that I’d written decades ago. As a result, I’m releasing 15 songs on an album entitled “Unfinished Business” under the pen name “Pinski Thomas”. I’ve provided links below to Spotify, iTunes and Bandcamp where you can listen to them, add them to your playlist or even download them for purchase! 😉
I hope you’ll take an hour out of your busy schedules and give them a listen. It’s been a labor of love for me and a lot of the credit goes to the musicians Mark and Matt for making this happen.
Here is the latest song the boys and I recorded. When I mean “latest”, I mean we took a song written in the 80s and resuscitated it. One more to go before I’m finished with the album. I hope you enjoy it.
The COVID pandemic has created havoc in most of our lives. Personally, I’ve found it very difficult to concentrate on my writing. There was something about the unpredictable daily chaos that absorbed all of my creative energy. Yet, while the world was “moving on”, as Stephen King would say, I did find solace in music.
In another lifetime, I used to write music and play in bands. I’m the first to admit that I wasn’t a very good singer or musician, but boy did I ever have fun. During the pandemic lockdown, I dug out and brushed off the dust on some of those old songs I’d written decades ago and realized that they weren’t half bad. The problem was my singing. So I teamed up with a couple of fantastic musicians who reimagined them and turned my creations into musical gems.
Both of my grandfathers died decades ago. One I knew very well and the other is just a hazy image floating around in the memory of a five year old boy. Both men did great things with their lives. They traveled across the ocean as immigrant children with no money and became successful. One owned a grocery store, and the other became the mayor of a small town for over 30 years.
Yet, when they died, their past died with them. Sure, they are remembered by older family members and friends, but most of them have passed away now. All of those wonderful stories or adventures told over dinner or a glass of wine are now lost forever. All that’s left are a few black and white photos with cryptic captions on the back.
As I sit here entering another phase of my own life, I wonder too if I’ll be remembered in years to come. Will my memories fade as friends and family move on? Probably. So very few of us are blessed with accomplishing something so wonderful or tragic that we make our way into the history books. Sure we’ll have Facebook accounts that live on for a few years and maybe even an obituary tucked into a photo album but, for the most part, we’ll all fade away like the colors of a painted barn.
So what are we to do with such a bleak destiny ahead of us? It’s one of life’s mysteries and I definitely don’t know the answer to that one. But I say there is something worse than being forgotten, and that’s never being known. Therefore, live each day to its fullest and share it with everyone and anyone near you. That’s the best we can do as humans.
It’s better to have been known and forgotten than to have never been known at all.
I’m a cancer survivor going on fifteen years. After dozens of radiation treatments and chemotherapy, my doctor told me I was cured. What he didn’t say, or didn’t emphasize, was the fact that radiation is with you for life and will continue to wreak havoc on your body in ways you couldn’t imagine. A hundred years from now, doctors will shake their heads and wonder aloud why we would put such a toxic material in our bodies willingly.
So here I sit, fifteen years later, still suffering from the side effects of the treatment and on my way into surgery again to try to save a portion of my body that couldn’t withstand the onslaught of radiation’s mighty sword. And like millions of other cancer patients, I will survive. All I ask is that if you are ever in a situation where a doctor suggests a vigorous dose of this toxic therapy, get a second opinion, maybe even a third and think real hard about the consequences. They are real and with you forever, just like that embarrassing post on Facebook.
The magic of modern medicine has touched all of our lives in many ways, but can you imagine where you’d be, or not be, if you’d been born during the last pandemic? I would’ve survived the pandemic, I’m sure. My immune system has resisted COVID several times so I’m one of the lucky ones with good genes. But, at 39, I would’ve probably died from a heart attack, if not, been severely disabled. Then, at 49, I would’ve died from cancer.
All this makes me pause and reflect. There would be no writing career, no music career, no watching my triplet daughters grow up into beautiful women. Then I think about all the people back then who died before their time and weren’t able to contribute that life changing achievement to the rest of the world because of some illness. It’s humbling.
And to all the people 100 years from now who read this message and are living way beyond their naturally selected time here on earth because of modern medicine, just realize how blessed you are to have been born after 2021, but most of all, please make me proud.
The COVID pandemic has created havoc in most of our lives. Personally, I’ve found it very difficult to concentrate on my writing. There was something about the unpredictable daily chaos that absorbed all of my creative energy. Yet, while the world was “moving on”, as Stephen King would say, I did find solace in music.
In another lifetime, I used to write music and play in bands. I’m the first to admit that I wasn’t a very good singer or musician, but boy did I ever have fun. During the pandemic lockdown, I dug out and brushed off the dust on some of those old songs I’d written decades ago and realized that they weren’t half bad. The problem was my singing. So I teamed up with a couple of fantastic musicians who reimagined them and turned my creations into musical gems.
This is one of the latest entitled “In These Eyes“. Please click on the link and enjoy. If you want to hear more, you’re welcome to visit my Bandcamp website where I’m found under the name “Pinski Thomas“.
Thomas Lopinski - Author 